14th - 18th April: Tanzania in a hurry

Having postponed my entry into Tanzania by a month in order to spend time at The Greenshop, I left myself with a grand total of four days to get from Mzuzu, Malawi across the entire length of Tanzania and into Nairobi, Kenya.

Mzuzu - Iringa
The first stage of my journey was on the midnight bus from Mzuzu. This  bus crosses into Tanzania and drives all the way to Dar Es Salaam on the eastern coast in one lovely 27-hour trip... But, despite my love of spending long hours on hot, crowded buses, I decided i'd break my journey in a Tanzanian town called Iringa - a mere 17 or something hours away.

When the bus arrived, I climbed on with my backpack to look for my seat - the one I had booked, paid for and been reassured was reserved for me. After a thorough look in the dark, which involved clambouring over several people asleep in the aisles and a futile conversation with the bus driver, it became clear that I would be joining the  aisle-dwellers and should prepare myself for an uncomfortable and sleepless night.  

After 5 long and sleepless hours sitting on my backpack on the floor, we arrived at the border crosing to Tanzania. The border crossing in fact wasn't due to open for another hour. We were early. The first bus journey that i had experienced that had arrived not just on time, but early - and there was absolutely no benefit to anyone at all! 

Once the border finally opened, I crossed out of Malawi and into Tanzania very smoothly, at least after the obligatory Ebola temperature test, form-filling and dollar-paying was completed.  Back on the bus, the driver made a big deal of finding me an available seat to sit in, in a manner that suggested he expected some thanks. He didn't get any.

We were soon on the road again and, as was more natural, running behind schedule...so my arrival in Iringa approximately 2 hours late, was of course no surprise at all.

As you can probably imagine, after getting off that bus, I couldn't think of anything better than getting on another one, so went straight to the bus station to buy a ticket for one the following day, before heading to the guest house i'd booked for the night.

Iringa
When Jan, Lonneke and Bobby were setting up The Greenshop, they went to visit a project in Iringa called Neema Crafts and Guest House. The project has been established for many years along the same principles as The Greenshop - i.e. to empower and enskill local deaf and disabled people and to create training and employment opportunities for them. Today, Neema has an extensive craft worksop, cafe and guesthouse which provides work opportunities for over 100 deaf and disabled artists, craftspeople, chefs, hospitality and customer services staff. It was also where i'd booked myself to stay for the night.

Despite my late arrival, I still had time to have some food in the cafe and compare signs with the deaf cafe staff (Tanzanian sign language is of course different from both Malawian and British, and like Malawian, differs depending on which school it is taught in) and to visit the craft shop downstairs. I'd love to have had more time there to visit the workshop in action, but it was great to be able to see some of the beautiful clothes, jewellery and gifts that are produced there, if only briefly.

After a comfortable night's sleep in a bed - rather than a bus aisle - I woke at 4.30am to make my way to the bus station once more. There I found my bus and - to my relief - a seat on it!

Iringa - Moshi
As bus journeys go, it didn't start off too badly. For the first half, nobody sat next to me, so I could spread out over a double seat, which was complete luxury after the previous trip. A couple of hours in to the journey, our route took us through a National Park where zebra and giraffe grazed at the side of the road - a slightly surreal, but beautiful sight from a bus window.  Sadly, all good things must come to an end and after four or five hours, we reached a petrol station and were asked to change bus to one that was waiting there for our arrival and was already pretty full. I spent the second half of the journey sandwiched between a very large lady and a very sweaty man..which wasn't ideal. So it was with much relief that I finally stepped off the bus eleven hours later, in Moshi.

Moshi
When you step off a bus at most South or East African bus stations, you are immediately engulfed by a whirlwind of people - generally men - who all want to 'assist' you with something, for a fee. So it was that on my arrival at Moshi, I was surrounded by insistent taxi drivers, transport or tour ticket touts and local guides - all wanting my custom. After some equally strong insistence on my part, accompanied by some slightly ropey Swahili, I was able to escape the Moshi pit (ha!) and wander off undisturbed to find a taxi to take me to my hostel.

Moshi is a sweet little town in the North of Tanzania, that sits in the shadow of the incredible Mount Kilimanjaro. As my journey had gone so smoothly (it's all relative!) up until Moshi, I decided to stay in the town for a couple of nights to relax and explore, before heading into Kenya and Nairobi.

After spending my first day pottering around the town, eating Masala Dhosa in an amazing local Indian restaurant and drinking lots of local coffee (and other appropriately named drinks), I decided to hire a local guide and head out of town.

Marangu
My guide Harrison and I caught a 'dalla dalla' (local minibus) from the bus station...

I don't think this one's quite full yet...

...and headed out into the countryside. 

After just over an hour, we had reached our destination - Marangu.
Marangu is a beautiful village on the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro, traditionally the home of the 'Chagga' tribe and of great coffee. Once out of the dalla dalla, we made our way up a hill, shaded by lush vegetation, to visit a small coffee plantation.

It's fair to say that my first 6 months in Africa had been a pretty big disappointment as far as coffee went. I had expected to be drinking some of the best coffee I had ever tasted as so much amazing coffee is grown on the continent, but in many places i'd struggled to get anything other than tinned brown powder that wasn't even pretending very hard to be coffee. 

But, thanks to Harrison, I was about to drink a very special cup of coffee indeed.  It was just going to take a while...

Well worth the wait!

After our lovely visit to the plantation, Harrison and I left for a steep hike downhill to the local waterfall to eat our lunch. Both being quite big snake fans, we were very happy to find a lovely green one on the way as well as an angry fresh-water crab guarding the path to the waterfall!

It was a lovely day of walking in the fresh air, surrounded by nature...ahead of another hot day on a hot bus for the final stage of my journey to Nairobi.

Moshi - Nairobi
My third and final bus day started with an early wake-up - of course - followed by far too many hours in a hot bus. Thankfully it was a very comfortable bus with windows that opened and with quite a bit of space...at least until we picked up and squeezed in passengers from another bus that had broken down! The border crossing was fairly smooth and all was going relatively well until we hit the infamous Nairobi traffic.  Three hours after arriving on the outskirts of Nairobi, we eventually reached our central destination. During the long journey, I had got chatting to a local lady who was worried about me turning up in Nairobi without a taxi booked. Without me knowing, she had kindly arranged for her taxi driver to meet me from the bus and drive me to my hostel, which was very sweet and a lovely way to end my trip.

Interesting facts

• The unit of currency in Tanzania is the Tanzanian shilling. There are approximately 3,300 tanzanian shillings in a british pound
• Mount Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall - which makes it the highest free-standing (not part of a range) mountain in the world
• Time is counted differently in Swahili because East Africans count the first hour of the day (1 o'clock) as the first hour after sunrise, rather than the first hour after midnight. To them, the day starts when the sun rises, which kind of makes sense if you think about it.  7 o'clock in the morning British time is therefore 1 o'clock Swahili time and half past 3 becomes half past 9.  Confused?! 
• There are no ' Moshi Monsters' in Moshi, Tanzania - or at least none that I saw. ..
• This is a ridiculously long blog post considering it only covers 4 days! 

Language - kiSwahili 

• Hello/Hi:    Jambo
• Coffee:       Kahawa
• Bus:            Basi
• 10:15am:   saa nne na robo (quarter past 4...)

:)

X

14th March - 13th April: Mzuzu, Malawi

After a couple of weeks of relaxing on and in the lake, I headed North to Malawi's third city - Mzuzu - for a couple of nights before heading over the border into Tanzania.  

One of the reasons that I particularly wanted to visit Mzuzu was that I had heard about an interesting project there for deaf students that I wanted to see.  The project is a fresh fruit and vegetable shop and café in the city, which provides vocational training for five deaf students in horticulture, food preparation, hospitality and customer service. It also provides them with English and Life Skills classes.  As it is a fully functioning shop and café, all are welcome to pop in, buy some fresh food and enjoy a juice or freshly baked cake, so I did just that.

'The Greenshop' (as the project is called) is in a beautiful airy building in the town and provides a calm place to escape to from the noise, bustle, dust and heat outside. As well as fruit and vegetables, the shop sells other locally grown or made products including coffee beans, macadamia nuts, herbs and spices and organic soap.

After ordering a cup of fresh herb tea and a slice of homemade lemon cake, I started chatting to a Dutch couple - Jan and Lonneke - who were standing at the counter. They explained that they had set up the project in partnership with a local man - Bobby - who ran a fruit and vegetable business, but wanted to find a way of also supporting deaf and disabled people to work. By working together, 'The Greenshop' was born.

After an introduction to Bobby and a little more chatting about the project and about my job, Jan and Lonneke said that they were about to go to South Africa for a holiday and were looking for someone who could help out at the project while they were away...

So it was, that just over one week later, I had put my Tanzania plans on hold, decided to extend my Malawian visa, found somewhere to stay for a couple of weeks and was getting ready to learn some Malawian sign language! 


The Greenshop

Jan and Lonneke had also arranged for another volunteer to help out whilst they were away - Jody, who lived locally. So, we worked together for a couple of weeks, which was lovely.

Some of the work we did at The Greenshop during our fortnight together included:

• Consultations with the students about their experiences of and feelings about The Greenshop 
• Gaining the students' ideas about how The Greenshop could be improved for staff, students and customers
• Designing some new signs and order forms to encourage more customers to learn and use sign language
• Encouraging the students to take more of an active role in decision-making
• Accompanying the students to tennis lessons
• Drinking lots of herb tea and eating cake! (ok, not technically work...)
• Trying to forget British Sign Language and learn Malawian Sign Language!

It was a great experience helping out at The Greenshop. It was a privilege to spend time with five incredibly hard-working, motivated and welcoming students.  I learned a huge amount from them and am very grateful to them for their friendship, patience, honesty and laughter. I hope that I was in turn a little bit useful.

Jody and the students designing signs

The students - Ayiti, Collins, Levy, Sisya and Nthandose

Tennis lesson with Southern African Junior Champions

My Mzuzu 'home'

I was really lucky to find a lovely place to stay in Mzuzu, called 'Macondo Camp'. It was recommended to me by Brad, one of the people I visited the Lake Malawi islands with and it was a fantastic recommendation.

Macondo Camp is a very new lodge, run by an Italian couple - Luca and Cecilia. The lodge, which is set in beautiful gardens, is several kilometres outside of the centre of Mzuzu, away from all the noise and close to a forest.  Macondo Camp is also home to Mzuzu's only Italian restaurant, serving up delicious home-made pastas and fresh sauces.

I loved my time staying at Macondo Camp. It was relaxing and very homely thanks to the beautiful surroundings and to Luca and Cecilia's friendship, food and great taste in music!

Luca and Cecilia 

Livingstonia

While i was staying in Mzuzu, I decided to take a trip up to LivingstonIa.  Livingstonia is a small town that sits on top of a mountain in the North of Malawi. It is the site of Malawi's first church which was built in the 1880s by Dr Robert Laws, from the Free Church of Scotland and was named after Dr David Livingstone (the same one who 'discovered' Victoria Falls). 

To get to Livingstonia I took a local minibus from Mzuzu through the mountains, keeping my head stuck firmly in a book to avoid seeing the sheer drops by the side of the road!  After just over 3 hours, i finally clambered out of the bus at Chitimba, a lakeside town at the foot of the mountain. 

At Chitimba I met my guide and escort for the mountain climb - a local guy called Vegemite. (Not the name his parents gave him...) It was Vegemite's job to encourage, persuade and - if necessary - push me up the 10km of mountain that stood in front of me. He told me it should take us somewhere between 2 and 4 hours - depending on my level of fitness. We set off, Vegemite chatting and me feeling reasonably confident of my fitness. After 30 minutes of trekking, I was a complete mess! As I sat in a sweaty heap, Vegemite told me stories of previous trips up the mountain including one where a group of 6 young fit walkers were all reduced to tears at one stage or another by the climb... 

Strangely, this information helped. Filled with a new determination to get to the top and - more importantly - to do it without crying, I set off. In the words of my guidebook, the road up the mountain 'forces it's way up the escarpment in a series of lethal hairpins'', and during our trek we were passed by several local pick-up trucks - piled high with produce and people - screeching their way around those bends. Seeing people perched precariously on top of sacks, bananas and other people, i felt almost relieved to be tackling the mountain on foot.  We were also passed by many women carrying phenomenally heavy loads of bananas or wood on their heads who were nonetheless almost skipping up the mountain...putting my efforts to shame.

After just over 3 hours, a lot of sweat but no tears, we reached Mushroom Farm; a beautiful collection of chalets and tents perched on the mountainside where I would be staying for the night, before the final  5km walk to Livingstonia in the morning. It was a very welcome sight after the trek, as was the beautiful view.

After a lovely sleep in my four-poster tent with a view, I woke rested and refreshed and ready for the last part of the walk to Livingstonia and the nearby waterfalls - a much more relaxed stroll.

My final night on the mountain was spent at Lukwe Permaculture Camp - another beautiful camp with a view - a sheer mountain drop on one side and lovely permaculture gardens the other. I could quite happily have sat on the wooden verandah and stared at this view for a week...

...but the next morning it was time to leave.  Luckily I was able to get a lift down the mountain (quite an experience!) and all the way back to Mzuzu with the manager of Mushroom Farm, so could rest my aching legs and avoid another crazy minibus ride.

Interesting facts

• There are quite a few deaf schools in Malawi and they each teach a different sign language. However all use a common alphabet (the same as American Sign Language)

• The unit of Malawian currency is the 'Malawian Kwacha'
• I am not as fit as I thought I was...

Critters

No blog post would be complete without some critters, so here are a  couple I met on the mountain.

Mantis or miniature alien...? 

:)

X